A powerful US administration faction is pushing hard for military intervention in Syria now. It argues the time is ripe and fast action would have the added value of delaying an Israeli strike against Iran. Jumping into the fray, the latest DEBKA-Net-Weeklyout last Friday judged the strength of the anti-interventionists surrounding President Barack Obama. Their only concession was the president’s threat this week to Bashar Assad against using chemical and biological weapons.
So how close is America to a military operation in Syria?
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Saudis offered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Mecca a non-aggression pact. Tehran rejection would lay Iran open to attack. The Iranian president sought counter-guarantees that Saudi Arabia would not be party to US or Israeli attacks. It is up to Khamenei to decide what next.

Iran’s Saeed Jalili visited Beirut and Damascus for military coordination with Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah on their respective roles in retaliating for a potential US/Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites and the regime in Damascus being squeezed into a danger zone. They decided that in either case, the mutual Iranian-Syrian defense pact would be invoked.

Bands of young Sinai Bedouin have turned their backs on tribal affiliations in and formed lawless bands of jihadis which are highly vulnerably to Iranian and radical Palestinian penetration. Those bands carried out the twin attack on Egyptian and Israel military targets last Sunday.

Tehran gave Bashar Assad its strongest avowal of support yet Tuesday, Aug. 7, while heaping threats on the heads of his enemies, especially the US, Turkey and Israel. Saeed Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, sat alongside the Syrian ruler in Damascus at the end of their talks and vowed not to let Iran’s “close partnership with the Syrian leadership to be shaken by the uprising or external foes” or the “axis of resistance (Iran, Syria, Hizballah) be broken.” Assad pledged to purge Syria of terror.

Monday, Aug. 6, the head of Iran’s National Security Council Saeed Jalili touched down in Beirut shortly after Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani declared: "The fire that has been ignited in Syria will take the fearful (Israelis) with it. Jalili (not Larijani as misreported earlier) came for urgent on-the-spot coordination with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah before continuing Tuesday to Damascus. They discussed ways of stamping Iran’s mark on Syria after Bashar Assad’s exit. Military plans against Israel are part of their schemes.

The initial Egyptian and Israeli accounts of the attacks in which 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed and the Israeli border crashed Sunday night, Aug. 5, don’t match up: Egypt points the finger at the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip; Israel at Sinai salafists. debkafile postulates a third option: Tehran may have harnessed its Gaza Strip proxies and a Sinai al Qaeda cell for coordinated attacks on Egyptian and Israeli military targets to avenge Al Qaeda’s enlistment to the Western-Arab-backed revolt against Bashar Assad.

The US has quietly crafted a new Kurdish state in northern Syria. It is linked to the self-governing Kurdish republic of Iraq and defers to its rulers. Turkey and Iraq feel betrayed by Barack Obama, fearing their own Kurdish minorities like Iran’s Kurds will be swallowed up by the long dreamed-of expanding Kurdish entity.

Tehran accuses the new Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan of engineering bombing attack which killed half of Assad’s top team in Damascus. It sought to drive home the message that enemies of Assad are enemies of Iran and will be punished.

Foreign forces were piling up on Syrian borders Wednesday, July 25, bringing closer a confrontation which could spur the Assad regime into making good on its threat to use chemical weapons against “external aggression.” The immediacy of the peril, debkafile reports, has speeded the arrival of Russian warships to Syria to counter a potential Western, Arab or Israeli assault on the embattled country. London sources predict British military intervention, while Tehran is ready to fight off any attempt at regime change in Damascus.

The suicide bomber who killed six people in an attack on an Israeli bus at Burgas airport July 18, had accomplices, was “extremely experienced” and may have entered Bulgaria from Europe’s Schengen passport-free area, said Bulgarian Prime Minister Boygok Borisov. He spoke Tuesday, July 24, at a new conference with visiting US presidential anti-terror adviser John Brennan. The European Union turned down Israel’s request to blacklist Hizballah as a terrorist organization after Israel blamed it and Iran for the attack.

The suicide bombing attack in Bulgaria which left five Israelis dead and more than 30 injured on July 18 is seen by Western intelligence and counter-terror sources as marking Hizballah’s regression to its old tactics. After a 17-year break, the Lebanese terrorist group is again sending suicide killers to murder Israelis and Jews. Israel’s counter-terror agencies failed to pick up on this. While they are catching up, Iran and Hizballah will take the chance for more violence - unless Israel restores its deterrence with a firm hand.

Shiite unrest is bursting its bounds in the oil-rich Eastern Provinces of Saudi Arabia, dangerously close to the largest oil installations in the world. Tehran is signaling Riyadh that they can be disrupted by sabotage and not just by Iranian missiles.

The fall of Damascus may be drawn-out, bloody and excruciating. It will also have wide regional repercussions, as debkafile shows in this exclusive video, because neither the Assad regime nor Iran will take it lying down.

Western military sources warned Saturday, July 14, that not only Israel, but Turkey and Jordan, too, should prepare for chemical missile strikes by a beleaguered Bashar Assad after missiles were test-fired this week in the Syrian war game against all three. There is disagreement in the West on Assad’s motives for moving his WMD out of storage. Some US officials say he is safeguarding them against falling into rebel hands; British officials report chemical weapons at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo deployed for ethnical cleansing.

Moscow has removed the gloves in its defense of Syrian ruler Bashar Assad. Wednesday, July 4, senior Russian official Ruslan Pukhov warned: “If the Syrian regime is changed by force or if Russia doesn't like the outcome, it most likely will respond by selling S-300s to Iran." This threat gave substance to the hints thrown out by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his June 25 visit to Israel about breaking the UN arms embargo against Iran. debkafile’s military sources disclose that Israel has developed counter-measures for this advanced Russian missile.

Saying “An Islamist flood threatens us all, the Russian president put before the Israeli prime minister propositions of a secret conduit through Moscow to Tehran and help for mending Turkish-Israeli relations in return for a Russian stake in Mediterranean oil.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has often before exploited his many medical problems for manipulation. Although “enjoying” ill health, he is very much in control of affairs of state in the Islamic Republic, although a crop of would-be successors are waiting in the wings for him to go. The radicals have a profound interest in keeping Iran's nuclear program, his pet project, afloat after he is gone, and are exploiting gossip about his ill health to speed matters up.

Russian President Vladimir Putin started putting his plans for Russia to displace the US at key Middle East points at the Moscow nuclear talks and the G20 summit in Mexico where he enlisted China and Iran to defeat Washington’s plans. Starting out with a scheme of revenge for Libya, his horizon has since widened to blocking US President Barack Obama's Arab Revolt objectives and his policies for Syria and Iran.